The Screengrab : john ford

Set Your DVR!: May 27, 2009 - the foreseeable future

Hayden Childs — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:00:00 GMT

This is the last time I’ll write one of these columns (unless, of course, someone wants to hire me to do so), but I just wanted to mention how much fun it has been. I know that I haven’t been doing these as frequently as I should. My real job has been taking precedence, and now that I actually will have some time, there ain’t gonna be no Screengrab no more. So, since we are near the end, I wanted to write a super-deluxe column. Luckily, cable tv has made that easy by scheduling a ridiculous number of great movies in the near future!

Wednesday, May 27
On Wednesday, the best bet is Errol Morris's documentary Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, which is playing on IFC at 12:15 pm central/1:15 pm eastern (and sorry for the late notice!). Fast, Cheap and Out of Control is an impressive attempt to impose order into the chaos of the interviews, which is reflected in the subjects' chosen careers. Overnight, TCM is showing It Happened One Night at 1:30 am central/2:30 am eastern.

Thursday, May 28
Thursday has John Sayles's Lone Star on TCM at 9 pm central/10 pm eastern. That's one of the best Sayles movie, but I don't really need to tell you this, do I, dear Screengrab reader?

Friday, May 29
Starting at 5:30 am central/6:30 am eastern, Friday has six, count 'em, six, flicks worth a watch. First up is Amarcord, Fellini's last great movie, on IFC at the aforementioned time and again at 11:35 am central/12:35 pm eastern. Then TCM has The Blue Dahlia, the only movie based on a screenplay by Raymond Chandler, at 7:45 am central/8:45 am eastern. It's not the best film noir, but The Blue Dahlia has quite a lot going for it. In the afternoon, TCM is running Orson Welles's The Lady From Shanghai at 1 pm central/2 pm eastern. That's a great movie despite the ludicrous accent Welles sports throughout. In the evening, Ovation is running The Triplets of Belleville at 7 pm central/8 pm eastern and again at 10 pm central/11 pm eastern. Ovation keeps the aspect ratio of the films it runs, but it does cut for commercials frequently and sometimes bleeps adult language in racier movies. There's no adult language in The Triplets of Belleville, though. If something darker is more your style, IFC is showing Roman Polanski's Death and the Maiden at 7:15 pm central/8:15 pm eastern and again overnight at 12:30 am central/1:30 am eastern. Also overnight is the Jamaican crime flick that made Jimmy Cliff an international star, The Harder They Come, on TCM at 1:15 am central/2:15 am eastern.

Saturday, May 30
Saturday is always a good day for cable movies. The first one I want to mention is New World Order, as discussed by my esteemed colleague Mr. Scott Von Doviak, which is playing on IFC at 9 am central/10 am eastern. That's awfully early for conspiracy theories! I guess they have to get moving early on Saturday before the Military-Industrial-Fast Food-Big Oil-Computertronic-Cell Phone-Google-Movie Critic Complex gets its coffee. Unfortunately, IFC is also showing it at 3 pm central/4 pm eastern, which is all part of their plan, man! I also want to mention The Searchers on AMC at 11:30 am central/12:30 pm eastern. Don't watch good movies on AMC. They cut 'em down to 4:3 aspect, and then pan-&-scan them. It should be a crime to show The Searchers in anything other than widescreen. So skip it on AMC and get the DVD instead. Saturday afternoon is more promising. Ovation is showing Waking Life at 1 pm central/2 pm eastern. Not everyone loves or likes that movie, but I thought it was striving mightily towards something, and it deserves points for that. TCM is showing (in the correct widescreen aspect and uncut) The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly at 4 pm central/5 pm eastern. If you missed The Triplets of Belleville on Friday, Ovation is showing it again at 5 pm central/6 pm eastern and Waking Life again at 11 pm central/midnight eastern.

Sunday, May 31
Peter Weir's The Last Wave is one of those movies that I have a hard time rating. On one hand, it has a spooky ambience and haunting conceit that it doggedly maintains throughout. It features the only performance by Richard Chamberlain that could conceivably be called "acting" that anyone ever caught on film. On the other hand, the ending is profoundly silly, especially after all the dread leading up to it. With that caveat, I recommend that you take in a viewing if you haven't seen it. It's on IFC at 7 am central/8 am eastern and again at 1 pm central/2 pm eastern. Ovation is running The Triplets of Belleville again at 1 pm central/2 pm eastern and Waking Life again at 7 pm central/8 pm eastern. Ovation is also running Crumb at 9 pm central/10 pm eastern. Also recommended: since Sunday, May 31 is the ostensible last day of the Screengrab, spend your day perusing our archives!

Monday, June 1
There's funny and there's John Ford. The funny is Duck Soup on TCM at 1:30 pm central/2:30 pm eastern, then The Awful Truth on TCM at 5:15 pm central/6:15 pm eastern, and finally Young Frankenstein on Fox Movie Channel at 8:30 pm central/9:30 pm eastern. But TCM is running a John Ford film festival overnight starting at 7 pm central/8 pm eastern with Directed By John Ford, a documentary about the man as narrated by Orson Welles. Then there's Stagecoach (9 pm central/10 pm eastern), which is the movie Orson Welles watched to learn how to make movies, then The Horse Soldiers (10:45 pm central/11:45 pm eastern), The Quiet Man (1 am central/2 am eastern), and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (3:15 am central/4:15 am eastern). That's a lot of horse opera (with an Irish interlude), but it's well worth it. Be sure to keep an eye on TCM this month, because they're running blocks of movies by great directors through all of June, sometimes two a day.

Tuesday, June 2
Ovation has the neorealist classic The Bicycle Thief (aka Bicycle Thieves) at 2 pm central/3 pm eastern and again at 5 pm central/6 pm eastern and overnight at 1 am central/2 am eastern. Thrill to the despair of a family man clinging to existence in post-war Rome! At 7 pm central/8 pm eastern, TCM is showing It Happened One Night, the first in a Frank Capra film festival running overnight. At the same time, Fox Movie Channel has Vanishing Point. But I recommend that you catch Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey on Ovation at that time (although it's playing again at 10 pm central/11 pm eastern). It's a fairly obscure documentary about the electronic musical instrument and its inventor that packs a surprising story and an emotional punch.

Wednesday, June 3
Nothing today, sorry (if he's your thing, TCM has a King Vidor film festival this evening, so check it out). Perhaps you could spend your day weeping for the lost Screengrab and cursing the cruel economy?

Thursday, June 4
TCM is running an Ingmar Bergman film fest starting at 7 pm central/8 pm eastern with an appearance by the director on the Dick Cavett Show from 1971. Then there's The Seventh Seal (8 pm central/9 pm eastern), Wild Strawberries (9:45 pm central/10:45 pm eastern), Persona (11:30 pm central/12:30 am eastern), Hour Of The Wolf (1 am central/2 am eastern), and The Passion of Anna (2:45 am central/3:45 am eastern). The first three in particular are necessary viewing for film geeks.

Friday, June 5
IFC has Before Sunrise at 4:15 pm central/5:15 pm eastern, but TCM is running Carol Reed movies all day and Steven Spielberg movies all night. Check out the schedule. Of course, I especially recommend The Third Man at 5 pm central/6 pm eastern.

And this is as far out as I'm going with specific recommendations. But watch TCM for Fritz Lang Day on June 8, Preston Sturges Night on June 10, John Huston and Akira Kurosawa on June 11, Jacques Tourneur on June 12, and... I should really cut this off here. It's been fun! Thanks for reading!

Screengrab Presents THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES EVER!!!! (Part Seven)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Hayden Childs's Top Ten Best Movies Ever!

1. THE WILD BUNCH (1969)
2. THE SEVEN SAMURAI (1954)

Although I listed The Wild Bunch in the first spot, this one is equally deserving. Perhaps more. The story is simple: poor peasant villagers, beset by marauding bandits, hire a group of down-on-their-luck samurai to defend them. But this is storytelling at its finest: lyrical, universal, and profound. Akira Kurosawa was a great fan of John Ford, and the epic sweep of Ford's Westerns added to the majesty of The Seven Samurai. Look, I can hardly talk about this movie. It's just too much.

3. McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971)

4. BADLANDS (1973) & DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978)

Terrence Malick's first two films are wondrous. I mean this in the sense that they contain wonders to behold and that they are themselves wonders. For one thing, they shouldn't work. Both movies are narrated by girls on the cusp of becoming young women, and both often suppress dialogue to emphasize through voiceover the inner lives of their narrators. Badlands recasts the story of serial killer Charles Starkweather into an insular fairy tale, a Brothers Grimm story about murderous innocence. Days Of Heaven is like an Andrew Wyeth painting given life, and like that other famous artwork that springs to life, Pinnochio, it's a much darker story with breathtaking beauty and sudden horror. (HC)

5. GRAND ILLUSION (1937) & THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939)

6. THE SEARCHERS (1956)

The Searchers is such a strange film, veering wildly between the unholy obsession, the blanket condemnation of racism, the anti-hero who might well be the hero, the cornpone humor, the score that screams of American exceptionalism even as the movie shows itself deeply ambivalent about America's past. This multifaceted approach is offputting at first, but utterly compelling over multiple viewings. John Ford and John Wayne made a hell of a lot of Westerns together, but this is the greatest. (HC)

7. THE GODFATHER PART II (1974)

8. UNFAITHFULLY YOURS (1948) & THE LADY EVE (1941)

9. VERTIGO (1958) & LA JETEE (1962)

Vertigo is Alfred Hitchcock's finest film, an echo chamber of fetishistic obsession with an almost indescribably weird plot. La Jetee is Chris Marker's most accessible movie, a short film captured almost entirely in still shots with a voiceover explaining key plot points. The plot revolves around an obsessive remembrance of an event from the protagonist's youth. One of the major scenes echoes a scene in Vertigo. In his film Sans Soliel, which almost made this list, Marker explains how obsessed he became with Vertigo, wanting to copy it as a means of understanding and possessing it. The embedded video below contains all 26 minutes of La Jetee in its totality. (HC)

10. COCKFIGHTER (1974)

Monte Hellman made some heady no-budget movies in his heyday, but this one, in which Warren Oates plays a cockfighter who has taken a vow of silence, is the headiest (sorry, Two-Lane Blacktop, but you're second in my heart). Let me be clear: cockfighting is one of the ugliest, most vulgar and inhumane sports known to man, and I find it reprehensible. Hellman looks at it without flinching and finds the beauty within. Oates is one of my favorite actors, and never is he better than here, a movie in which he has maybe five lines of dialogue, although he is in every scene. (HC)

11. TOUCH OF EVIL (1958) & YOJIMBO (1961)

Both of these movies make art out of sheer pulp. By almost any standard, Touch Of Evil should be unbelievably bad, but it's astonishingly great, better, I dare say, than Citizen Kane. It's a police procedural where the killing and killer are completely irrelevant to the plot. It's a movie about a corrupt cop who is always right about his suspect even when he plants evidence (and unlike, say, 24, the film doesn't condone police corruption). It's a movie with an unhealthy amount of cheese and ham - Charlton Heston as a Mexican cop!, a biker gang all addled on weed who abduct Janet Leigh!, Marlene Dietrich as a gypsy fortune teller! Orson Welles in a fat suit (or should that be an even fatter suit?)! - that somehow turns it all into the finest cinematic cuisine. Yojimbo also starts with a pulp premise, in this case a samurai version of Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key and Red Harvest, and finds a way to frame it all into a stunning battle royale. (HC)

12. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952)

What the first thing an actor learns? The show must go on!

Here's several other movies that ought to be on this list, and would have been if I'd figured out a way to stretch the idea of Top Ten any further:

Aguirre, Wrath of God (Herzog, 1972)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1965)
Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)
Ikiru (Kurosawa, 1952)
Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1977)
Miller's Crossing (Coen, 1990)
Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
Playtime (Tati, 1967)
Ride The High Country (Peckinpah, 1962)
Rio Bravo (Hawks, 1959)
Week End (Godard, 1967)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributor: Hayden Childs

53 Years Ago in the Screengrab: Finding "The Searchers"

Phil Nugent — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:00:00 GMT

[It's been ninety years since Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., D. W. Griffith, Frank Capra, Ben Hecht, Louise Brooks, and Roscoe Arbuckle met at an open-air press conference to announce that they were combining their resources to produce a new film journal called "the Screengrab". And while it's true that the "open-air press conference" was technically a conversation between the founders and some vice cops who discovered them out in a field at 2 A.M. with 68 gallons of bathtub gin, eight underage girls, and a ram named Ulysses, and that many people think they were just stalling until their lawyers arrived, Chaplin, a man of his word, ordered his manservant to buy a printing press as soon as he was released from custody and his hangover had dimmed enough that he could once again operate his mouth. As the Screengrab approaches yet another signal moment in its ongoing evolutionary history, we are proud to reach back into our archives and reprint some rarely seen features from our illustrious past.[

1956: At 62, John Ford has the impressive, stolid quality of a small mountain who figures that either Mohammad can damn well come to him or they can both get along without each other. You don't expect a man Ford's age to be spending his days camping out in Monument Valley, but by now, this venerable Western location must feel like home to Ford--and if it didn't, Ford keeps himself surrounded by enough of his living personal history to make anyplace feel like home. The set of The Searchers, the movie he's about to wrap, is populated by crew members and technicians and actors from many earlier Ford productions, including Ward Bond, Harry Carey. Jr., Hank Worden, John Qualen--and the picture's star. John Wayne, making his ninth feature with Ford since the director guided him to his breakthrough performance in Stagecoach, seventeen years ago. (Wayne's son Patrick, who appeared in Mister Roberts and had uncredited bit parts in four other Ford films, is also in it, in the small, comic role of an eager young lieutenant.) In The Searchers, Wayne plays a former Confederate soldier who devotes years of his life to tracking down the niece who was abducted as a child by Comanches. Ford's temper is famously fiery and notoriously unpredictable. It's with no small degree of trepidation that one suggests to him that it must be hard finding a way to freshen what must seem like very familiar material to him, especially working with collaborators he knows so well.

Surprisingly, a trace of a smile spreads across Ford's face. "I imagine a lot of people will go in expecting to see something they've seen before. 'Let's go admire the old boy's craftmanship, see what he can do with his hundredth cowboy movie', like that. Well...we'll see. It's just possible they'll find something in this one that opens the form out a little."

Now, relaxed after his lunch and a few questions from the dumbass representatives of the press, Ford settles into his chair and prepares to shoot the final location scene. You can sense people snapping back to attention: it's time to go back to work. "Action!" Ford yells. Natalie Wood, who plays the niece grown to young womanhood, come running past the camera, running as if her very life depended on it. Wayne charges up behind her, on horseback. Suddenly, he reaches down and lovingly scoops her up into his arms. "Let's go home, Debbie," he says.

Suddenly, Ford explodes. Red-faced, he springs up from his chair. "Cut, fucking cut!!" he screams. Wayne sets Wood back down, and she shyly edges away from him, her face turning to ash. Wayne looks down at his feet. Everyone seems unsure what to do.

In the time it's taken him to walk to where Wayne is standing, Ford's fury seems to have turned to bewilderment and shock. "What...what was that?" he asks. "Do you...during lunch, did you..."

Wayne is uncharacteristically abashed. "I'm sorry, sir. I just...

"You've read the script?"

Wayne's face tightens, as if he were starting to get angry, but his respect for, and maybe his fear of, the older man tamps that down. "Of course, sir. I know what the scene..."

"Why!? Why did you do that? Why did you say that!?"

Wayne no longer hangs his head to look down at Ford. He stiffens to his full height, as if posing for a statue. "I wasn't planning to do that," he says. "I was going to do it like it says in the script, but when I got close to her--what I did, sir, it was instinct. Because it's what felt right!"

Ford stares at Wayne. You can almost hear the crickets chirping. Finally he says, "For Roy Rogers, maybe! You're playing Ethan Edwards! You're a deranged killer! A psychotic racist! You fought for fucking slavery, goddammit, and that was before you lost your mind! This girl, this last remaining trace of your family, the blood of your blood, has been living with the Comanches. She's been sleeping with the Comanches! She has become a Comanche."

Wayne kicks a clod of dirt with the heel of his boot. "I know, sir," he says, in a little boys voice.

Ford is in shock. He sounds as if he's trying to explain how a light switch works to his adult son, whose basic intelligence he has never doubted up to that moment. "There's no way your character could ever be reconciled to that. It couldn't happen! Certainly not...not at that moment, that way, just like that! It would turn the movie into a joke. That's why, when you catch up to her, you grab her, you throw her down, you smash her head with that rock, then you take your knife and slit her throat, you make another incision straight down the front of her, and when Martin runs up and finds you, you're sitting there grunting like the caveman you've always been one step away from regressing to, eating her raw liver. You understand?"

Wayne is looking everywhere but at Ford's face. "Yes, sir."

Ford stares at him for a minute, then gives him a conciliatory punch to the arm. "I know it's a big stretch for you. We're gonna shake 'em up with this one, John. Now get back on your horse and get back into place. Were gonna go again and this time you do it like the stunt choreographers have been showing you all week, right?"

Wayne nods and climbs back onto his horse.

Ford returns to his chair. "Action!" he yells. Wood comes running past again, Wayne comes galloping up behind her, and again, he grabs her and sweeps her up into his arms. "Let's go home, Debbie."

"Cut!"

Ken Curtis, standing just out of range of Ford's hearing, looks at Wayne and emits a low, admiring whistle. "Man," he whispers to nobody in particular, "I didn't know they grew death wishes that tall."

"Sir," Wayne says to Ford, who's still seated in his chair, "I'd like to talk about the scene. Something inside me says to me..."

"Gosh, Mar-i-on," says Ford between gritted teeth, "there's nothing I'd like more than to have a good long chat about the scene that you agreed to do as written and that we've been preparing to do these past few months, but there's thing that we in the motion picture business refer to as "losing the light", and I'm afraid that's going to happen to us if we get embroiled in a stimulating exchange of ideas. So here's my idea, seeing as how it's my picture and all; why don't we shoot the scene, as written, Mar-i-on, and then we can talk about all the better ways we could have done, without regard to whether or not they would have rendered the preceding two hours of movie utterly meaningless and preposterous, all the walk back to Los Angeles. Is that acceptable to you, Mar-i-on?"

Wayne stares at Ford long and hard. "Yes, sir," he says, and climbs back onto his horse.

Soon, he and Wood are back in their starting places. "Action!" yells Ford. Wood comes running across the set, Wayne comes riding up behind her, scoops her up in his arms, says, "Let's go home, Debbie."

You can hear a pin drop. "Cut," Ford says, almost lackadaisically. "Not quite the right approach. Let's go again. Natalie, let me go if you need to take a break to let your legs rest." He leans his head towards his assistant and murmurs, "Start brewing up some iced tea, would you?" Wayne and Wood are back at their places. Ford looks in my direction, the first time he's acknowledged my presence since beginning work on the scene. "It happens," he whispers with a shrug. "In a situation like this, the only thing to do is to just keep shooting it over and over. Eventually, one of us is going to break. And I think Mr. Wayne is in for a surprise as to which of us it's going to be."

Great Beginnings: Screengrab's Favorite Opening Scenes Of All Time (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:30:00 GMT

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989)

Endings and (especially) middles are hard, but there’s something liberating about the instant rush and hit-the-ground momentum of beginnings, which is why so many great (and even not-so-great) directors are often inspired to make big, bold “HERE I AM!” statements in the first few minutes of films that frequently can’t compete with their own opening sequences. But Spike Lee, after two previous good-but-not-great at-bats with She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze, finally knocked one out of the park with Do The Right Thing, which exploded onto movie screens with the sex-and-violence one-two punch of Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” and Rosie Perez’s fly-girl attack during the opening credits, then jolted audiences again with an alarm clock and the fast-talking “WAKE UP!” morning rap of Samuel L. Jackson’s dee-jay Mister Señor Love Daddy, who keeps the pace and sets the scene, letting us know in no uncertain terms that it’s HOT and about to get hotter as Lee takes us on a tour of his beloved Bed-Stuy neighborhood, introducing us in quick succession to most of the major players in a world as instantly distinctive as John Ford’s Monument Valley...or even Woody Allen’s Manhattan. (AO)

APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)

Rarely has a film’s initial moments set the forthcoming tone as immediately and evocatively as those of Apocalypse Now with its protracted shot of the Vietnamese jungle. From silence comes the sound of helicopter blades, then the airborne choppers themselves, and then the sparse electric guitar notes of The Doors’ “The End.” When Jim Morrison’s voice croons “This is the end” and bursts of napalm decimate the lush forest, the film fully enters into the realm of the hallucinatory, with Francis Ford Coppola’s pan through the smoke and fire soon integrating the superimposed image of Martin Sheen’s upside-down face, his head on a pillow facing a ceiling fan. Dream and reality coalesce in a woozy, hazy blend of longing, fear and self-inflicted violence (symbolized by a gun lying beside Sheen on the bed) that result, per the Lizard King, in “a wilderness of pain. And all the children are insane.” Table-setters don’t get much more exquisite than this. (NS)

BARBARELLA (1968)

This is more of an excuse for showing Jane Fonda naked than anything else, but the same could be said of the entire movie. An astronaut clad in a rather community theatre-looking metallic space suit floats weightlessly above a yellow shag carpet. Elevator muzak plays in the background and piece by piece, the suit comes off, revealing the astronaut to be a comely blonde, naked beneath the suit. Soon we have Barbarella floating around with her ass in the air to the tones of 1960s muzak. Cute and sexy for sure, but also disturbingly fetus-like. (SCS)

LA DOLCE VITA (1960)

La Dolce Vita has its fair share of famous scenes. The opening in which Jesus dangles from a helicopter flying low over Rome beats Anita Ekberg in the fountain by a mile. Fellini knows that any good opening needs to be odd and enjoyable besides hinting at what's to come. Here we have religion, sexy rich women, poor street boys, modern technology and ruins. And Paparazzo taking photos of it all while Marcello Mastroianni's character quietly eggs him on. (SCS)

THE SEARCHERS (1956)

Much is made of the final scene, where the movie's hero/anti-hero, the racist Ethan Edwards, cannot enter the embrace of the household, and the door slowly shuts on him. The opening scene is a mirror of the end, with Ethan's sister-in-law Martha opening the door and walking from the cool shade of the house into the harsh light of Monument Valley, relocated from Utah to Texas for the purposes of the film. Ethan is riding his horse in through the desert, still a ways off although closer than anything else in the huge landscape. The camera's journey from the dark interior to the brilliant and tremendous exterior emphasizes just how small the ranch is. Ethan's visit is his first in many years, and although the film doesn't say a word about it, it is clear that while his sleazy exploits are one reason he has stayed away for so long, his love for Martha is the primary cause. The whole of the plot revolves around that unspoken love. If you look for it, you can see it from the first moment Martha's face becomes visible, all of the concern and ambiguity that she cannot speak. Unspoken truths are at the heart of The Searchers, and in the gulf between what is said and what is meant is the real history of this country. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Hayden Childs

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Feb. 14-20, 2009

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. You look marvelous. I must confess I was touched, as am I every year, when the good people at AMPAS called once again to ask me to host the Oscars. Although they begged and pleaded and cajoled and nearly stooped to bribery, as they always do, I simply could not work the telecast into my very busy schedule. I’m currently touring with my very touching one-man show about going to Yankee Stadium with my dad, watching Mickey Mantle gracefully prancing through the lush green outfield of the House That Ruth Built, sharing the laughs and the tears that only a father and son can truly know. So I don’t have time to do all the research, such as reading Up the Academy: The Screengrab Salutes the All-Time Best & Worst Best Picture Winners (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven). Truly I wish I could squeeze Phil Nugent’s Oscar Predictions, In Other Blogs: Oscar Overload, Harvey Weinstein Predicts Another Great Oscar Year for Harvey Weinstein, Oscar Prospectus and Academy Awards Show Cuts Best Song Nominee "Down to Earth" Down to 65 Seconds; Peter Gabriel Vows Silent Protest into my busy schedule. But I cannot.

Nor can I read any of the following:

If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Time for Another Post About "The Godfather"

Screengrab Review: "Must Read After My Death" and "Eleven Minutes"

Mike White’s Amazing Race

Counting Down to “Watchmen”

Reviews By Request: How Green Was My Valley (1941, John Ford)

Unwatchable #51: “Simon Sez”

Steve Spielberg's Recession-Era "Lincoln" Biopic: Brother, Can You Spare $50 Million?

Reviews By Request: How Green Was My Valley (1941, John Ford)

Paul Clark — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:00:00 GMT

After last week’s Reviews By Request poll resulted in a tie, I decided to watch and write up the first of the two “requested” films, John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley, in advance of this weekend’s Oscar ceremony. My review of the second film, Tom Jones, will run two weeks from today.

Among many film lovers, John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley has gotten something of a bad rap as the movie that bested Citizen Kane for the 1941 Best Picture Oscar. And while Valley isn’t the film Kane is, we might say the same of nearly any other film ever made, which makes the comparison a little unfair. Moreover, it makes perfect sense that the Hollywood establishment would prefer the elegiac Valley to the scathing Kane, especially when you consider that both films were made during World War II, when national and pro-Allied sentiment were at their peak. But today, these concerns are incidental, and the most important thing is this- How Green Was My Valley is still a pretty terrific film.

How Green With My Valley, based on a best-selling novel by Richard Lewellyn, tells the story of the Morgans, a Welsh family living in a mining community around the turn of the century. The Morgans aren’t rich, but they seem to be pretty blessed- patriarch Gwyllim (Oscar-winner Donald Crisp) works in the coal mine alongside his five eldest sons, mother Beth (Sara Allgood) cares for the house with their only daughter Angharad (Maureen O’Hara), and the youngest boy Huw (Roddy McDowall) is bright and full of potential.

However, the family’s troubles begin soon enough. The closing of mines in neighboring valleys lead to a surplus of workers in the area, leading to lower wages and job loss. Two of the sons leave home to seek work overseas, later followed by two others. Angharad, despite her feelings for the local preacher Gryffudd (Walter Pidgeon), marries the son of the mine’s owner, a marriage that takes her overseas as well. And the mine claims both the family’s eldest son Ivor and, eventually, Gwyllim.

But although How Green Was My Valley is undeniably a story filled with loss, it’s anything but a slog. That’s because Ford, Lewellyn, and screenwriter Philip Dunne infuse the film with a warm nostalgia for the long-gone world of the film. The story is narrated by the now-grown Huw, and he remembers his childhood with fondness, and even when things didn’t go so well, he learned from his experiences and survived to tell the tale. Heck, look at the title. Not only does it emphasize the “was,” thereby implying that it’s no longer so green, but it’s also “my valley”, implying that it’s the valley of Huw’s memories.

Consequently, the storytelling is characterized by broad narrative strokes rather than minute detail. The circumstances of a miners’ strike are sketchy, as they would have been to a young boy (this is a far cry from the grimness of Ford’s last film The Grapes of Wrath). Huw’s memories of the strike consist mostly of talk of unionization, and the gloom that settles over the town during the months when the men aren’t work. Most of the film is like this, with adults’ affairs observed as if from a distance, although Huw’s own experiences seem more vivid. The only (small) objection I have to the film’s storytelling is that it occasionally brings out Ford’s somewhat awkward sense of low comedy. I for one could have done without the antics of a pair of drunken brawlers who are tasked to teach young Huw how to fight.

But such objections are small compared with achievements of How Green Was My Valley. Supposedly, the film was originally intended to be a massive Technicolor extravaganza in the vein of Gone With the Wind, but when the war began Fox had to move shooting from Wales to California, trim the running time in half, and shoot in black and white. I can’t say for sure, but I think the film benefited from this smaller scale- the travails of the Morgans probably couldn’t withstand the epic treatment. And while shooting in black and white was a practical decision that allowed the hills of California to convincingly double as the Welsh countryside, it also enhances the nostalgic vibe given off by the film in a way that the flashier Technicolor couldn’t have managed.

And if nothing else, it’s that nostalgia that makes How Green Was My Valley work even today. The chief pleasures of the film don’t come from the story but rather from the portrayal of the community itself, a community that, if it didn’t already belong to the past when the film was made, surely does now. Perhaps most important are the old Welsh songs that fill the soundtrack. Ivor is the leader of a chorus in town (he gets invited to perform for the Queen), but even the miners sing hearty tunes as they come down the hill after a long day’s work. “Singing is in my people as sight is in the eye,” observes the adult Huw, and this music extends even to the spoken dialogue. When Angharad gets engaged, Gryffudd’s heart is broken, but he buries his own feelings in the interest of her future. As he tells her, “I think I would start to kill if I saw the white come to your hair twenty years before its time.” Who talks like this anymore, if in fact anyone ever did? Exactly.

Set Your DVR! December 22 - 29, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I don't know if your Christmas week is anything like mine (if you even have a Christmas week, that is), but every year, I spend an inordinate amount of time on the couch. It's a good way to be with family without having to, y'know, talk with anyone. I usually lay there, using my mind only to ponder how full my belly is and wondering how long it will take me to digest enough to make room for another slice of pecan pie. But this year, instead of mindless entertainment, I intend to engage with some movies! Maybe that will take my mind off of food. For a little while, at least. Here's what's good this week, in the central/eastern format. I'm also moving overnight movies to the prior day write-up, which is my policy from here forward.

Monday, December 22:

Monday offers two flicks about evil and naivety! What could be better than considering evil during the final weeks of the year? Au Revoir, Les Enfants is Louis Malle's examination of life in a French boarding school during the Vichy occupation. Our young protagonist seems to be going through normal kid issues, but his innocence is threatened by the War and his growing suspicion that a schoolmate might be a hidden Jew. The Quiet American is based on Graham Greene's novel about a not-so-well meaning journalist encountering a CIA agent in 1950s Vietnam. Strangely enough, the CIA agent may be the more naive of the two.

12:30/1:30 pm: Au Revoir, Les Enfants on IFC.
2:30/3:30 pm The Quiet American on IFC.
2:30/3:30 am: Enemy Mine on AMC.
5:05/6:05 am: Au Revoir, Les Enfants on IFC.

Tuesday, December 23:

Tuesday's full of anti-war sci-fi in the AM! Maybe it's not great sci-fi, but it's (probably) worth a viewing, especially with impressionable young minds around you. Enemy Mine, one of my favorite movies when I was 13, is about setting asides differences in the face of a hostile universe. I haven't seen it since I was a kid, but I recall that it had a strong anti-war and pro-cooperation message. A far better movie (with far less latex and, well, mostly the same message) is the original The Day The Earth Stood Still, an untouchable classic that only a fool would attempt to remake. Finally, The Day After is a good way to wrap up the morning with some schlock that originally aired on TV when I was exactly the right age for a nascent political awakening (that would be 1983, when I was 11). In light of the dramatic depiction of the harshness of life after a nuclear attack on the US, I remember my shock and disbelief when I overheard President Granddaddy Ronald Reagan on TV pushing for more nuclear weapons. He lost my vote that day.

In the afternoon, there's John Ford's 3 Godfathers, which is like a Western version of Three Men And A Baby, only with death and despair. Awesome! Then Roman Polanski's The Pianist offers a little more death and despair. And finally, as a salve to all of this suffering, Lubitsch's The Shop Around The Corner is the sweetest and bestest romantic comedy that ever graced celluloid. (Note: the overnight movie discussed here rather than on the prior day for thematic purposes.)

2:30/3:30 am: Enemy Mine on AMC.
7/8 am: The Day The Earth Stood Still on AMC.
9/10 am: The Day After on SCIFI.
3/4 pm: 3 Godfathers on TCM.
4:30/5:30 pm: The Pianist on IFC.
5/6 pm: The Shop Around The Corner on TCM.
2/3 am: The Shop Around The Corner on TCM.

Wednesday, December 24:

Christmas Eve brings more despair! I recommend that you choose wisely and then go volunteer in a soup kitchen. Nobody Knows is a 2004 Japanese film based on a true story about children who were horribly neglected by an unfit mother and then abandoned to survive on their wits alone. Guaranteed to make the hardest heart break down and openly weep. Brother's Keeper is the uplifting documentary about a rural community that rallies around a near-feral farming family when one brother is accused of murdering another. The Delicate Art of the Rifle is a microbudget indie about a sniper on a college campus. Death and the Maiden is Roman Polanski's film (of the Ariel Dorfman play) in which a woman (Sigourney Weaver, who has never been better) is convinced that the man who gave her husband a ride home was the man who tortured and raped her while she was a prisoner of the previous brutal regime. It is stunningly good and sadly underappreciated. Finally, Bad Santa is the salve for all that ails us.

6/7 am: Nobody Knows on IFC.
8:30/9:30 am: Brother’s Keeper on IFC.
10:30/11:30 am: The Delicate Art of the Rifle on IFC.
12:05/1:05 pm: Nobody Knows on IFC.
2:45/3:45 pm: Brother’s Keeper on IFC.
4:35/5:35 pm: The Delicate Art of the Rifle on IFC.
6:15/7:15 pm: Death and the Maiden on IFC.
10/11 pm: Bad Santa on Comedy Central.

Thursday, December 25:

Tidings of comfort and joy for all: TCM has a film fest of Bogie's most iconic movies on Christmas Day. That'll deck your halls with boughs of something. Note that it runs all night.

7/8 am: 3 Godfathers on TCM.
2/3 pm: Bad Santa on Comedy Central.
7/8 pm: Casablanca on TCM.
9/10 pm: The Big Sleep on TCM.
11 pm/12 am: The Maltese Falcon on TCM.
1/2 am: The African Queen on TCM.
3/4 am: High Sierra on TCM.

Friday, December 26:

Back to our regularly scheduled holiday sadness! George Washington is a must-see film about youths who can't see a future for themselves in their quiet North Carolina town. Elephant is about youths whose future is brutally taken away for reasons unknown. And The Honeymoon Killers is about hideous sociopaths who love each other and brutalize the world. Happy fucking Boxing Day!

9/10 am: George Washington on IFC.
10:35/11:35 am: Elephant on IFC.
2:05/3:05 pm: George Washington on IFC.
3:35/4:35 pm: Elephant on IFC.
5/6 pm: The Honeymoon Killers on IFC.
3:35/4:35 am The Honeymoon Killers on IFC.
5:25/6:25 am: George Washington on IFC.

Saturday, December 27:

Saturday is about Japan. First up is The Greatest Story Ever Told, aka The Seven Samurai. I believe I recently wrote here that The Wild Bunch was the best film ever. That's only half-true, because The Seven Samurai is its equal. Damn, this movie is good. Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon isn't even close to the same league, but it's pretty great on its own. Finally, Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle is not the best Miyazaki movie, but it's wonderful and highly, highly recommended.

7/8 am: The Seven Samurai on IFC.
10:30/11:30 am: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on IFC.
2:30/3:30 pm: Howl’s Moving Castle on IFC.
4:30/5:30 pm: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on IFC.

Sunday, December 28:

Wait, Sunday is about Japan. Rashomon, another film by Akira Kurosawa, is iconic and a must-see for fans of cinema, although it isn't quite as great as his best movies. The Bad Sleep Well is Kurosawa's corporate office take on Hamlet. Of his three Shakespeare adaptations (the other two are Throne of Blood/MacBeth and Ran/King Lear), it is the least, but it's full of his distinct sensibilities and very enjoyable. Finally, Malick's The Thin Red Line is half-war movie and half-nature documentary and all about the human soul. Overnight, there's Tati's utterly delightful Mr. Hulot's Holiday, which is full of wit and pratfalls.

7/8 am: Rashomon on IFC.
8:30/9:30 am: The Bad Sleep Well on IFC.
8/9 pm: The Thin Red Line on IFC.
2/3 am: Mr. Hulot’s Holiday on TCM.
2:30/3:30 am: The Thin Red Line on IFC

Monday, December 29:

Dreary Monday! Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a film based on a play that delights in its own postmodernity. If you watched The Bad Sleep Well, definitely follow it up with this. And then put off whatever it is that you're supposed to be doing. Kiss of Death is one of the great film noirs. The Sweet Hereafter, Atom Egoyan's film based on Russell Banks's devastating novel, will ruin you in a good way. And The Player is Robert Altman's great tribute/kiss-off to Hollywood.

6:50/7:50 am: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on IFC.
9/10 am: Kiss of Death on FMC.
1:30/2:30 pm: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on IFC.
9/10 pm: The Sweet Hereafter on IFC.
11 pm/12 am: The Player on IFC.

Set Your DVR!: December 15 - 22, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

What a great week for movies on cable! Here’s what’s coming up that’s worth your time. In the spirit of the holidays, I’ve even gotten a little expansive. But this week brings another embarrassment of riches.

The times are, as always, in Central/Eastern format. Also, as always, please let me know in comments if you see something coming up that I’ve missed. I’ll try to add it to the regular column if I can, but my time will be tight in the next few weeks, so please don’t be too disappointed if I don’t get to your recommendation.

Monday, December 15:
2:45/3:45 pm: Mystery Train on IFC. Jim Jarmusch’s triptych about the strange charms of Memphis, TN.
6:25/7:25 pm: George Washington on IFC.

Tuesday, December 16:
3:25/4:25 am: Mystery Train on IFC.
6:50/7:50 am: George Washington on IFC.
7/8 am: Decision at Sundown on TCM. A Randolph Scott & Budd Boetticher Western, and that means good.
7:30/8:30 am: Batman on AMC. This is the 1966 Batman, the very definition of campy.
10:25/11:25 am: Howl’s Moving Castle on IFC. Miyazaki’s great animated film about war and magic and love and identity, presented here in the original Japanese with subtitles.
12:30/1:30 pm: George Washington on IFC.
4:05/5:05 pm: The Thin Red LIne on IFC. Malick’s unconventional anti-war drama is a force of nature.
5/6 pm: The Cincinnati Kid on TCM. What could be more exciting than Steve McQueen playing high-stakes poker?
7/8 pm: Shadow of a Doubt on TCM. Great little second-tier Hitchcock film that ought to be in the first tier.
11 pm/12 am: The Third Man on TCM. If you like movies and haven’t seen this, you MUST rectify your oversight immediately.

Wednesday, December 17:
8:30/9:30 pm: Death on the Nile on TCM. A Hercule Poirot mystery that was a favorite of mine when I was a kid. The nonstop excitement practically screams “heavyset Belgian detective!”
8/9 pm: The Thin Red Line on IFC.
11 pm/12 am: The New World on IFC. That's a lot of Malick for one sitting!

Thursday, December 18:
1:30/2:30 am: The Thin Red Line on IFC.
4:25/5:25 am: The New World on IFC.
9:15/10:15 am: The Naked City on TCM. One of the greatest film noirs.
10:30/11:30 pm: Blade Runner on SCIFI. Always worth a viewing.
11 pm/12 am: Vanishing Point on FMC. As the Zen koan says, -There is no why. There is only Kowalski driving through the desert.

Friday, December 19:
12/1 am: Before Sunset on WE. I try not to mention movies that will be broken by commercials, but this one, a sequel to 1995’s Before Sunrise, has a certain charm in its older, wiser take on young love.
1:30/2:30 am: Elephant on IFC. Dreamy Van Sant flick about high school snipers.
3/4 am: Vanishing Point on FMC.
8:45/9:45 am: Paths of Glory on TCM.
5:30/6:30 pm: The Others on OXYGEN. Pleasantly creepy ghost story starring Nicole Kidman.
6:15/7:15 pm: The Player on IFC. Altman’s tour de force “conventional Hollywood” film, which starts with an extended homage to Touch of Evil and proceeds to tear down the walls of Old Hollywood.
8:30/9:30 pm: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou on IFC. Many Wes Anderson fans felt that this was the moment when his whimsy and prop fetish finally overwhelmed his ability to tell a story. I think there’s a beating heart in this story, but The Darjeeling Limited was an unpleasant stillborn mess.
11 pm/12 am: The Face of Another on IFC. Brilliant and creepy Japanese horror film about the slippery nature of identity.

Saturday, December 20:
2/3 am: The Face of Another on IFC.
5:30/6:30 am: The Ox-Bow Incident on AMC.
7/8 am: The Hidden Fortress on IFC. Akira Kurosawa’s tale of a princess in peril, swept away by war, protected by her loyal general, and kept constantly on the verge of trouble by a couple of bumbling peasants. Reportedly one of the major inspirations for Star Wars.
7/8 am: The Others on OXYGEN.
7:15/8:15 am: My Darling Clementine on AMC. Iconic John Ford Western about the shootout at the OK Corral.
2:30/3:30 pm: 8 Women on LOGO.
5:35/6:35 pm: Gosford Park on IFC. Robert Altman’s brilliant upstairs/downstairs Edwardian murder mystery.
8:30/9:30 pm: Mulholland Dr. on LOGO. One of David Lynch’s best films, propelled by dream-logic and horror.

Sunday, December 21:
8:45/9:45 am: Kiss of Death on FMC. Top-notch film noir. Unfortunately, it’s playing at the same time as...
8:45/9:45 am: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse on IFC. Fritz Lang’s 1933 thriller that didn’t just invent the procedural, but built it on a parable about a crime boss able to mesmerize his subordinates with his words and imagery. Lang fled the Nazis for America almost immediately after its release. The ability of many of the scenes to retain their shock value today is a testament to this movie's sheer brilliance.
12:15/1:15 pm: Gosford Park on IFC.

Monday, December 22:
2:45/3:45 am: The 400 Blows on TCM. Francois Truffaut’s incredibly powerful ode to child neglect and juvenile delinquency.
7/8 am: Au Revoir, Les Enfants on IFC. Fantastic Louis Malle flick about a boarding school in France during the Nazi occupation that’s hiding a young Jew.
11 am/12 pm: Bringing Up Baby on TCM. A screwball comedy classic that everyone should see at least once in this all-too-short life.
12:30/1:30 pm: Au Revoir, Les Enfants on IFC.

Yesterday's Hits, Veteran's Day Edition: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, William Wyler)

Paul Clark — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

World War II was the first major war that was extensively documented by Hollywood. Even as it was in progress, hundreds of newsreels and documentaries helped to increase awareness of how and why we were fighting, including works by major filmmakers like Frank Capra, John Ford and Howard Hawks. But after the war was over, no one was really telling the stories of the men who were coming home and trying to resume their lives again. Sensing the need for this story to be told, producer Samuel Goldwyn commissioned Robert E. Sherwood, who had served as the head of the Office of War Information, to write a screenplay based on the novel Glory for Me by MacKinlay Kantor, which tackled this subject.

As befitting the importance of the subject matter, Goldwyn then proceeded to assemble an A-list cast and crew for the project. To direct, Goldwyn chose William Wyler, one of Hollywood’s most respected filmmakers. He then hand-picked an A-list cast, led by Oscar-winning actor Frederic March and popular leading man Dana Andrews as two of the returning soldiers, and Hollywood’s top female box-office draw Myrna Loy as March’s loving wife. In perhaps his biggest gamble, Goldwyn cast in the key role of the disabled Navy veteran Homer Parrish a non-actor named Harold Russell, an actual vet who’d lost both of his hands in battle.

Like all of the risks Goldwyn took in bringing The Best Years of Our Lives to the screen, this one paid off magnificently. Prior to the film’s release, he famously stated, "I don't care if the film doesn't make a nickel. I just want every man, woman, and child in America to see it." And while there were at least a handful of people who didn’t see the film, it nonetheless became a massive hit, reportedly the biggest to coming out of Hollywood since Gone With the Wind. On top of that, it also took home seven competitive Academy Awards including Best Picture, best director for Wyler, acting Oscars for March and Russell, and a second honorary award for Russell, “for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans.”

For years, The Best Years of Our Lives was one of the most acclaimed and beloved of all Hollywood movies. But while the patriotic sentiment that was stirred up by the memory of World War II had helped to make the film one of the biggest blockbusters of its time, subsequent conflicts made war- and the movies based on it- more controversial in the minds of the public. For most movies about war and its consequences, it was no longer enough to matter-of-factly tell the stories of the people who fought and those they left behind. Especially in the wake of Vietnam, war became a political issue, and most directors of war movies wore their own politics (whether they were for it or against) on their sleeves.

By contrast, it’s hard to tell how the makers of The Best Years of Our Lives felt about World War II just by watching the film. But then, it doesn’t really matter. The Best Years of Our Lives is not a pro-war or anti-war story, but one that accepts the war as a fact of like. Al (March), Fred (Andrews), and Homer (Russell) fought in World War II, and now that it’s over they have to deal with what happened while they re-acclimatize themselves to life at home. The film is about how the war affected them and those who love them- no more, no less.

One of the most significant decisions made by Wyler and Goldwyn was that the film would be a character study. Key to this effect is the film’s running time, ten minutes shy of three hours, which affords the audience plenty of time to get to know the three returning men and observe their lives. This extra time makes a difference- rather than trying to pare down the characters’ trajectories in order to make a tight two-hour movie, Wyler and Goldwyn let the stories play out at an unhurried pace. Instead of feeling like a handful of vignettes, the characters in The Best Years of Our Lives are given time to think and change, to make mistakes and learn from them, and ultimately to grow into their new lives.

Each of the three returning men does so in a unique way. Ever since losing his hands, Homer has had trouble with how others treat him, although it's a credit to the film that don't treat him poorly, just... differently. Homer’s story is the simplest, and the most poignant, due in no small part to the directness and un-faked sincerity of Russell’s acting. Al’s storyline is the subtlest of the three, in large part because he’s the one who seems to have his act together. He comes back from the war to a loving family and a successful job in a bank. However, his war experiences begin to manifest themselves in small but recognizable ways. When he gives a loan to a returning serviceman, his boss tells him he should pay more attention to the applicant’s collateral than to his character. He hardly recognizes his kids, who’ve grown up in his absence. And he begins display an increased eagerness to drink, which doesn’t go unnoticed by his wife Millie. Loy is just right as a woman who loves her man enough to forgive him his misdeeds, but would like some way to understand what’s making him do them.

Yet in many ways, it’s Frank who is at the center of the film. Frank, who came from wrong side of the tracks, went to war and became a hero, winning a number of medals including the Distinguished Flying Cross. But his accomplishments mean nothing in the civilian world without the work experience to back them up, and he finds himself working at his old job in a drugstore. And having wooed his wife Marie (Virginia Mayo) with his slick looks in a uniform and his generous Army salary, she’s naturally not too happy to have to live off a soda jerk’s salary. Meanwhile, Frank finds himself falling for Al’s daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright), much to Al’s dismay.

The biggest reason why The Best Years of Our Lives has endured as a classic is because its characters are completely human-sized. While the cast is filled with popular stars of the day, they’re always convincing as complicated everyday people instead of the fantasy archetypes who normally inhabit high-profile Hollywood films. In making the film, Goldwyn, Wyler, and the rest of the cast and crew showed a real respect for the bankers, the soda jerks, the disabled, the nurses, the housewives, the children, and everyone else who’s been affected by war. The title refers to “our lives,” and the filmmakers understand this. And that, more than anything, is why it still works.

Visions of Change: Cinematic Utopias & Worst Case Scenarios (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Now that our favorite reality show is over and Barack Obama has officially been declared America’s Next Top Commander-in-Chief, we here at the Screengrab can finally breathe a sigh of relief and allow ourselves a few hope-filled dreams of a better world full of gay terrorists and socialized abortions and redistributed wealth for all...while up in Alaska, Track and Trig and Trots and Trickle-Down and all the other residents of Wasilla are having nightmares about the very same thing.

As Milton said, “The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n,” and, frankly, given the overactive imaginations in our little corner of the blogosphere and all the campaign promises and scary robocalls of the past few weeks, we’ve spent WAY more time than usual contemplating any number of best and worst case scenarios for our nation and the future of humanity in general...

...which eventually led to us contemplating our Netflix queues instead, so we could stop thinking so much and just zone out for a while with the following movies, as we take a break from politics and go to our happy place (and a whole bunch of not so happy places) with our salute to The Screengrab's all-time favorite cinematic utopias and dark, dystopic futures!

IDIOCRACY (2006)

We already paid tribute to the brilliance of Idiocracy in a previous list, but it seemed appropriate to kick off with a nod to Mike Judge’s cult classic about a fast-food, monster-truck future where the average IQ has dropped to sub-Heidi & Spencer levels, anybody with an original thought is automatically labeled a “fag” and Ow, My Balls! is America’s number one show, since it features the endlessly hilarious spectacle of a man getting nailed in the nuts again and again and again and again and...anyway, let’s just say it’s the kind of “real” America a certain fake plumber I know might find utopian, while my elitist ass would be searching for the nearest “Time Masheen” home.

LOGAN'S RUN (1976)

There's always a catch, isn't there? The world of Logan's Run certainly seems like a utopian one, assuming your idea of an ideal society resembles a Dallas shopping mall circa the Bicentennial. Inside the domed city of the future, everything is provided for you, including all the sex, drugs and plastic surgery you could ever want. However, as your thirtieth birthday approaches, the red crystal implanted in your palm begins to blink, signaling that your time is just about up. On Last Day, you report to Carousel, which looks like a fun way to go if you like floating around in a colorful bodysuit and bursting into flames. Be advised that there is always the chance of "renewal" although no one really seems to know exactly what that is or if it has ever happened. If this seems like a bad deal, you can always run and seek Sanctuary outside the dome. There are two flaws in this plan: 1) Armed enforcers called Sandmen will try to kill you. 2) If you do manage to find Sanctuary, you'll probably be disappointed unless you want to spend the rest of your life with a smelly old man and his cats.

WALL*E (2008)

Let's face it -- for all the hard work that goes into designing them, most big-screen sci-fi and fantasy worlds aren't exactly the kinds of places we could imagine ourselves actually living in. To cite one example, we wouldn't want to live in a future full of feral Australians who power their city with pig shit, although to be certain, we'd consider it if Thunderdome was there. So compared to most movie futures, the world conjured up by Pixar's WALL*E looks pretty darned appealing. After all, doesn't it sound ever so wonderful to live forever in a deep-space colony where all of your daily responsibilities -- walking, feeding yourself, even procreating -- are taken care of for you by the latest in efficient yet people-friendly machines? In the world of WALL*E, all of this is possible. The catch? The space colonies aren't destinations for vacationers, but rather their new home after life on Earth became unsustainable as a result of excess consumption and pollution. Enabled by mega-corporate sponsor Buy-N-Large, the citizens of these brave new worlds become even lazier, not to mention universally obese. WALL*E was attacked by the right as being a pro-environmental screed (like that's really a bad thing?), but take a second look at the film and tell us it's not more of an attack on complacency, that unfortunate tendency on the part of most people to take the easy way out rather than do a little more work to save themselves in the long run. Luckily for the characters in WALL*E, life eventually finds a way, making it possible to resettle and rebuild the Earth. It's up to us to pull ourselves together enough to preserve our way of life before WALL*E becomes a reality.

ROAD TO UTOPIA (1946)

Okay, so it’s not really Utopia. It’s Alaska, which, judging by the quality of politicians they produce, is anything but. “Utopia” isn’t much more than the title of the final entry in the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby ‘road picture’ series; in fact, it’s just a hustle by Crosby’s Duke Johnson to swindle Hope’s Chester Hooton out of some cash. But Road to Utopia is far and away the funniest of the Road pictures, its self-reflexive, self-deprecating, mile-a-minute humor much more in keeping with the anarchic films of the Marx Brothers than the kind of hoke that Crosby usually associated himself with. There’s lots of inside jokes, an amiable hatred between the two leads, an absurd plot that never gets in the way of good gags, special guest appearances by master humorist Robert Benchley, and, of course, Dorothy Lamour, looking as lovely as ever. Watching Hope and Crosby take clever cheap shots at each other for an hour and a half may not be Utopia, but it’s close enough for us.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)

In Barack Obama’s America, “socialism” is a word that got thrown around before his election to scare people. Betting on the ignorance of Americans that dozens of prosperous countries get along just fine with some state control of the private sector, right-wing scaremongers used to imply that Obama was a new Stalin who would centralize the Wal-Mart and send anyone who owned a shotgun to a gulag somewhere outside of Wasilla. In John Ford’s Hollywood, though, “socialism” was a new and tempting word for a country that had been beaten to the point of utter despair by the worst economic depression in history. To millions of Americans, the limited socialism advocated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt seemed like it might be the country’s salvation at the same time the nation’s rich excoriated him as a communist who would be America's doom. While much of Europe turned to the poison of fascism to rescue it from the Depression, FDR’s mad notion that the government’s job was to help those who can’t help themselves found a receptive audience among most citizens – a notion reflected in The Grapes of Wrath. Late in the book, Tom Joad’s migrant Okie family, near shattered from death and poverty and hostile, exploitative bosses – come upon a farm camp called the Wheat Patch, which seems like a utopia: no cops allowed without a warrant, free food and shelter for those who work for it, and “the best dances in the county, every Saturday night”. Henry Fonda’s Tom Joad, in utter disbelief that such a place exists free from the cops and bosses who have tried to squeeze him every step of his journey, goggles: “Who runs this place?” Told it’s a government facility, he asks why there aren’t more of them. “You find out,” replies a caretaker with some cynicism. “I can’t.”

Click Here For Part Two, Part Three & Part Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Paul Clark, Leonard Pierce

Set Your DVR!: October 27 - November 3, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Halloween week means more vintage horror! TCM in particular is even exceeding their own high standards this week, shoehorning in a night of Billy Wilder on Tuesday (nothing is recommended because everything is fairly well-known) and a few film noir classics on Wednesday before cranking up the scary on Thursday. As always, let me know in comments if you see something I shouldn’t have missed!

Mon, Oct 27:

11 am/12 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. As I said last week, it’s not a great movie, but it has a few iconic scenes.

Tues, Oct 28:

5/6 am: The Invisible Man on AMC. Based on Ralph Ellison’s classic novel of race in America... whoops, that’s not right. No one’s ever made that movie. This is James Whale’s classic horror film starring Claude Rains.

6:45/7:45 am: Bride of Frankenstein on AMC. And this is James Whale’s frankenlady movie.

7/8 am: The Desperate Hours on TCM. Neat little thriller about convicts on the lam starring Humphrey Bogart.

11 pm/12 am: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. Repeat.

Wed, Oct 29:

1/2 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. Repeat. Last time I’m going to mention it, in fact.

7/8 pm: Murder, My Sweet on TCM. Killer adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely.

10:45/11:45 pm: Out of the Past on TCM. Film noir classic with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas. Directed by Jacques Tourneur, who also made three of the Val Lewton-produced no-budget horror films we’re recommending this week.

Thurs, Oct 30:

12:30/1:30 am: They Live By Night on TCM. Earlier movie based on the same source material as Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us, which is one of his most underappreciated movies.

3/4 am: House of Wax on CHILLER. Vincent Price’s classic. Note: You will not see Paris Hilton in this movie.

3:45/4:45 am: The Thing From Another World on TCM. Howard Hawks directing an early sci-fi/horror movie. The John Carpenter movie The Thing was a remake.

6:30/7:30 am: The Beast with Five Fingers on TCM. FIVE WHOLE FINGERS! YAAAAAARGH!

7:30/8:30 am: 8 Women on LOGO. Francois Ozon assembles every major French actress of our time for a half-musical/half-murder mystery.

8/9 am: I Walked With A Zombie on TCM. Jacques Tourneur doing horror on a Val Lewton production.

9:15/10:15 am: Curse of the Demon on TCM. Recut version of the horror film Night of the Demon. Directed by Jacques Tourneur applying what he has learned from doing horror on Val Lewton productions.

10:45/11:45 am: Gerry on IFC (repeat at 4/5 pm and on 11/31 at 4:10/5:10 am). I just keep recommending it!

5:30/6:30 pm: House of Usher on TCM. Roger Corman! Vincent Price! Edgar Allan Poe! You might be surprised to learn that this is a tender romantic comedy.

7/8 pm: Dead of Night on TCM. Creepy little horror anthology from Ealing Studios. And no Sir Alec Guinness to be found!

Fri, Oct 31:

A quick note: TCM owns Halloween programming. You can’t go wrong with anything they’re showing all day.

1/2 am: Kwaidan on TCM. A beloved Japanese horror anthology.

3:45/4:45: Spirits of the Dead on TCM. A triptych of short films from Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini (which of these names is not like the others?). I’ve never seen it, but the cast of Jane Fonda, Brigitte Bardot, Terence Stamp, and Alain Delon sounds promising.

6:30/7:30 am: Cat People on TCM. More Lewton & Tourneur!

7/8 am: The Honeymoon Killers on IFC. Still brilliant, still vile.

8/9 am: Freaks on TCM.

8:30/9:30 am: Halloween on AMC. Halloween? Hasn’t everyone seen this? I suspect that some people have forgotten how effective it is with almost no budget and no special effects.

9:15/10:15 am: The Devil Doll on TCM. How many ways can I say “creepy”? This one’s directed by the creator of Freaks, Tod Browning.

2:30/3:30 pm: The Body Snatcher on TCM. More Val Lewton! With Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi!

4/5 pm: Bedlam on TCM. And even more Val Lewton! This one’s with just Karloff.

7/8 pm: The Host on G4. Korean horror movie with great special effects and a cruel sense of humor.

Sat, Nov 1:

1/2 am: The Host on G4 (repeats at 11/12 am).

1:30/2:30 am: Blood Feast on TCM. Things start getting ugly overnight at TCM. This is a challenger to Plan 9 From Outer Space for the coveted Worst Movie Ever award. Highly recommended! Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, whom you can read more about in our very own Scott Von Doviak’s excellent book Hick Flicks, which is a perfect stocking-stuffer for the film geek in your family.

2:45/3:45 am: 2,000 Maniacs on TCM. A follow-up to Blood Feast. I understand that the name is misleading, as Lewis only had to budget for 1,986 maniacs.

3/4 am: The Blob on CHILLER (Repeat at 6:00 am/7:00 am). Steve McQueen in the no-budget flick that might just be a parable about the insidious effects of CREEPING COMMUNISM! BOOGA BOOGA! Starring Barack Obama’s tax policies as The Blob and Sarah Palin as the small-town mayor who knows how to stop it. If only the people will listen!

5:15/6:15 am: Forbidden Planet on TCM. Ah, the horror is starting to subside. What better way to recover than a movie that puts Shakespeare’s The Tempest in space?

7/8 am: My Darling Clementine on AMC. One of the finest classic Westerns of all time. Starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford.

7/8 am: Sanshiro Sugata on IFC. Akira Kurosawa’s first film, this is a standard issue wuxia film in terms of plot and progression, but with Kurosawa’s unerring eye behind the lens, there’s moments of stunning beauty to be found. Unreleased on DVD, and a must for Kurosawa fanatics.

9:30/10:30 am: The Last Wave on IFC (repeat at 2:45/3:45 pm). Richard Chamberlain’s most shocking role (in which discernible acting can be detected!) about apocalyptic aboriginal weirdness in Australia. Directed by Peter Weir.

Sun, Nov 2:

Happy birthday to my mom and my brother-in-law Jeff!

7/8 am: Solaris on IFC. This is the Tarkovsky original, not the Soderbergh remake. A deeply sad, meditative movie about love and self and Otherness. I’m being purposely vague, but this review is only two sentences, and this movie deserves much more than that.

8:30/9:30 am: Macbeth on TCM. Orson Welles’s Macbeth with the bad accents and great filmmaking.

5:35/6:35 pm: The New World on IFC. Terrence Malick’s film about how struggle defines all human relationships, despite the transcendental indifference of nature. Did I just write that? This is easily one of the best films of the last decade, so just watch it.

8/9 pm: The Proposition on IFC (repeat on 11/3 at 1:15/2:15 am). John Hillcoat’s Aussie Western written by Nick Cave. It wants to be a Peckinpah movie, but it’s not even a Boetticher. That’s not to say it’s worthless, but it bites off more than it can chew. Hillcoat’s the director of the upcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I hope is better than this.

9:45/10:45 pm: The Year of Living Dangerously on TCM. Remember when Mel Gibson could act? Good times. Oh, ok. This is most definitely not a good time. Directed by Peter Weir.

11 pm/12 am (11/3): True Stories on VH1CL (repeat on 11/3 at 7/8 pm). It’s not a good movie, but it’s fun. This is David Byrne’s labor of love, a deliberately quirky look at America from one of its deliberately quirky pop culture figures. The Talking Heads songs aren’t their best, but they’re pretty good, and pretty good looks good from here.

Mon, Nov 3:

3/4 am: Isle of the Dead on CHILLER. Another Val Lewton production! Why is it on after Halloween? Apparently CHILLER has started the Halloween 2009 season early.

5:05/6:05 am: Tom Dowd & the Language of Music on IFC (repeat at 12:30/1:30 pm). Delightful documentary about the man with the golden ear who flawlessly recorded some of the greats of 20th century music.

10:05/11:05 am: The New World on IFC. Repeat.

10:30/11:30 am: The Man From Laramie on TCM. Anthony Mann Western with James Stewart. Not the best Mann Western, but it’ll do.

8/9 pm: Me and You and Everyone We Know on IFC (repeat 11/4 at 12/1 am). Miranda July is cute and a little alienating. John Hawkes learned from Deadwood the fine art of saying everything he has to say with his eyebrows. Somehow, despite the nearly lethal levels of quirk, July has made a movie with an enormous amount of heart.

Set Your DVR!: October 20 - October 28, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

What a great time of year for movies! If you're a fan of vintage horror, that is. Here's the DVR-worthy flicks on cable in the upcoming week.

Mon, Oct 20:

1:30/2:30 pm: The Haunting on TCM. Again, this is the 1963 Robert Wise version.

Tues, Oct 21:

11/12 am: Rio Grande on TCM. Classic John Wayne/John Ford Western.

8:45/9:45 pm: The Public Enemy on TCM. Buncha dirty rats doin' low-down dirty-rat bidness.

Wed Oct 22:

6:45/7:45 am: Batman on AMC. The 1966 version. Shark repellent, my friends. Need I say more?

8:20/9:20 am: George Washington on IFC (repeat at 2:35/3:35 pm). I'm not always going to repeat prior recommendations, but man, I like this movie.

3:30/4:30 pm: The Enchanted Cottage on TCM. I've never seen this, but it is apparently a much-loved, hard-to-see romance between an injured soldier and a lady who isn't much to look at. Unreleased on DVD.

6:15/7:15 pm: Last Days on IFC (repeat 10/23 at 2:00 am).

7/8 pm: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) on TCM. This is the one with Charles Laughton.

Thur, Oct 23:

Start the day (or previous night) with a Val Lewton film festival on TCM!

12:45/1:45 am: Cat People on TCM. The first collaboration between director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton (the king of no-budget atmospheric eerieness). Not exactly horror, but not exactly anything else.

2/3 am: I Walked With A Zombie on TCM. Not just a killer Roky Erickson song, this is another Tourneur/Lewton collaboration.

3:15/4:15 am: Isle of the Dead on TCM. Val Lewton production starring Boris Karloff.

4:30/5:30 am: The Body Snatcher on TCM. Val Lewton production starring Boris Karloff AND Bela Lugosi, directed by Robert Wise, and based on a Robert Louis Stevenson short story, of all things.

5:45/6:45 am: Shattered Glass on IFC. Some people missed this 2003 film in which Hayden Christiansen plays a character who is - get this - supposed to be wooden. Based on the true events around the fantasist Stephen Glass's deception of The New Republic

7:35/8:35 am: Manderlay on IFC (repeat at 1:35/2:35 pm). Lars von Trier's follow-up to Dogville is about a Southern plantation in the 1930s that has never freed its slaves. Do you like von Trier? Then you'll probably like this.

2:15/3:15 pm: D.O.A. on TCM. Film noir classic.

UPDATE: 8 pm (not sure of the time zone): Red Sun on Retroplex (free on Comcast Digital). This is a Western starring Charles Bronson, Ursula Andress, Alain Delon, and Toshiro Mifune. Whoa! Thanks to Janet for the hat tip.

Fri, Oct 24:

4:15/5:15 am: Manderlay on IFC (repeat).

Sat, Oct 25:

2:45/3:45 am: 200 Motels on TCM. Frank Zappa's wacky movie. Are you a fan of Zappa? No? Then you'll hate it. Unreleased on DVD.

5:15/6:15 am: The Curse of Frankenstein on AMC. Classic Frankenstein movie starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

7/8 am: Kiru on IFC (repeat at 1:50/2:50 pm). Samurai comedy! Yep.

8/9 am: Night of the Living Dead on SCIFI. Oh, you know this one already? You must have brains. Braaaaaaains.

11:30 pm/12:30 am: Catwoman on OXYGEN. Perhaps the scariest movie of the Halloween season. This movie has Halle Berry in the lead! (BWA-HA-HA!) And she’s trying to be sexy/sultry/non-robotic! (AAAAAAAH!) Actually, this is far too scary for anyone to view.

Sun, Oct 26:

12:45/1:45 am: The Honeymoon Killers on TCM. Brilliant and utterly repellent movie based on the true story of the Lonely Hearts Killers, who preyed on divorced women in the late 40s. Between this and Mad Men, you get the feeling that the mid-20th century wasn't such a great time to be an independent women.

7/8 am: The Ghost of Yotsuya on IFC. Ghosts! Samurais! Spurned Wives! Revenge!

10:00/11:00 am: The Flower of Evil on IFC. Directed by the Hitchcock-influenced Claude Chabrol. I haven't seen this one, but I run hot and cold on Chabrol movies.

1/2 pm: Kiss of Death on FMC. Fantastic film noir.

2:30/3:30 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. This isn't a great movie, but it has a few great - I'd go as far as "iconic" - scenes, most notably David Naughton's transformation into the title monster. Does AMC cut for content? I often skip movies showing on AMC because I hate watching commercials during films. And I don't know if the movies are running uncut with commercials or cut down for size. Let me know in comments if you have a better idea about what AMC is doing.

Mon, Oct 27 (ze spillover from Sunday):

1:30/2:30 am: Vampyr: Der Traum des Allan Grey on TCM. Now this is a great movie, Dreyer’s 1932 vampire epic. One of the greatest vampire movies ever made, in fact, up there with Nosferatu. I don't know how it will look in this cut, but I believe that time and neglect have left all existing prints somewhat faded.

3/4 am: Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte on AMC. Horror film starring Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, and Agnes Moorehead. Sounds like a recipe for overheated Southern goth to me, but it's pretty highly rated, so what do I know?

11 am/12 pm: An American Werewolf in London on AMC. Repeat.

Take Five: Labor Day

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Usually, the Screengrab's Take Five feature is inspired by some new release coming out the day we go to press. However, sometimes, if the raft of new releases in relatively uninspiring or inappropriate, we go with a different sort of them, and since today is the start of Labor Day weekend, what better time to salute organized labor? After all, some of us are union men ourselves (hey, the National Writer's Union is too a real union! We're part of the United Auto Workers for some reason!); and what with the writer's strike earlier this year that brought the movie business to a near-halt, and the possibility of an actor's strike later in the year coming along to finish what the writer's strike started, America hasn't been this aware of what organized labor is up to in years! Unfortunately, unless Vin Diesel's mercenary Thoorop in Babylon A.D. happens to be a dues-paying member of the International Brotherhood of Hired Killers & Machinegun Operators, there's no new released this holiday weekend that are even remotely about unions or the labor struggle. But that doesn't mean we can't dip back into our video vaults and come up with five fine flicks about working-class struggle for your Labor Day enjoyment. (And, as a special treat before you go back to work on Tuesday, take a few hours to watch Barbara Kopple's masterful Harlan County U.S.A., referenced in last week's Take Five.) Happy Labor Day, readers!

MATEWAN (1987)

Possibly John Sayles' finest film, Matewan depicts -- with the heart of a union man and the eye of an artist -- the brutal struggle to unionize among the West Virginia coal miners of the 1920s, one of the bloodiest periods in the history of organized labor. Based on the Matewan Massacre of 1920 and featuring breathtaking cinematography by Haskell Wexler, Matewan' s powerful story is bouyed by wall-to-wall terrific performances by Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, James Earl Jones, and a young Will Oldham, in his pre-rock star days. Essential.

NORMA RAE (1979)

Martin Ritt's feel-good hit about a scrappy female textile worker who takes on the burden of being the point woman for unionizing the clothing mill in the deep South that employs her hasn't held up particularly well -- it's got a handful of good performances (and won star Sally Field an Oscar), but at times it comes across as a bit hokey. But it still stands as a testament to one of the last flashes of union glory in the U.S. before Ronald Reagan's Republicans started their unrelenting war against organized labor in America. Worth watching as a document of its day.

ROGER & ME (1989)

Sure, nowadays, it's pretty easy even for liberals to make fun of Michael Moore. His insistence on making himself part of his stories has gotten out of hand, and in many ways, he's become the caricature lefty the right has always accused him of being. But in 1989, when he launched his quixotic quest to have just a few words with General Motors CEO Roger Smith and ask him to look at the massive devastation wrought by his moving manufacturing jobs out of Flint, MI to avoid union costs, he seemed like a true breath of fresh air and a voice for the voiceless.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)

It's almost impossible now to overestimate the impact of John Steinbeck's finest novel and the stirring masterpiece of a film that John Ford made of it. With the sting of the Depression fresh in the minds of millions of viewers -- and with labor conflicts so intense that big agricultural interests in California sought to have the movie banned, just as they removed copies of the book from California libraries -- the gorgeous, moving film was no stolid classic then, but an urgent cry for justice and decency at a time when the country was in its direst of straits.

AMERICAN DREAM (1990)

By the time Barbara Kopple finished her disturbing, heartbreaking documentary about a strike by meat packers at the Austin, MN Hormel plant, Reaganism's determination to crush unions wherever they could be found had already made its tragic story about the slow, tangled dismantling and destruction of a labor negotiating unit a familiar one all over the country. A far more ambiguous work than her Harlan County U.S.A., American Dream nonetheless shows the unremitting sadness of the direction our country took when it allowed ideologues to launch an assault on the hard-won gains of the working class.

DVD Roundup for August 26, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week’s bumper crop of Westerns necessitates a temporary name change for this column.

DVD of the Week: 1962’s How the West Was Won may not have been the greatest classic Western ever made, but it was almost certainly the biggest, boasting three directors (Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall) and an all-star cast (led by John Wayne, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, and Richard Widmark) to tell a Western family saga spanning half a century. In addition, the film boasting some stunning Western vistas designed to fully exploit the three-screen Cinerama process- this was one of only two narrative features to be exhibited using honest-to-goodness Cinerama. The biggest advantage of this week’s new Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray) of the film is that it comes closer than any DVD edition to date to replicating the look of Cinerama in digital form. Instead of the “join lines” and standard 2.35:1 ‘Scope framing of previous editions, this new edition of the film features a new technology that effectively unifies the three Cinerama frames into the original aspect ratio of 2.89:1. There are also a number of special features, notably the 2002 documentary Cinerama Adventure that explores the famed camera process, as well as a trailer, archival featurette, audio commentary, and plenty of collectible memorabilia about the film and its stars. Nothing will be quite like watching How the West Was Won in Cinerama, but this new edition makes the home viewing experience better than ever.

In other oater news, this week also brings the Warner Home Video Western Classics Collection, which includes the 1960 remake Cimarron, Escape From Fort Bravo, Many Rivers to Cross, Saddle the Wind, The Law and Jake Wade, and The Stalking Moon, with each film also sold individually. In addition, Warner is also releasing the Errol Flynn Westerns Box Set (Warner), which contains Montana, Rocky Mountain, San Antonio, and Virginia City. And don’t overlook the Blu-Ray only release of Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider (Warner).

Meanwhile, this week’s recent releases coming to DVD include: Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher in What Happens in Vegas (Fox, also Blu-Ray); David Mamet MMA drama Redbelt (Sony, also Blu-Ray); the acclaimed documentary Chicago 10 (Paramount), Lynch (Ryko Entertainment), a documentary about the ever-popular David Lynch; Uwe Boll’s must-see Postal (Universal Music & Video Distribution), costarring former DVD Digest contributor David Huddleston; and the latest release from our pals at Benten Films, Team Picture.

Other classics coming to DVD this week include: a new pressing of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s notorious final film Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Criterion); the Henry Selick-directed The Nightmare Before Christmas Collector’s Edition (Disney); Jeunet and Caro’s Delicatessen Special Edition (First Look); and Monica Bellucci’s nude body transforming into a rolling landscape for your enjoyment in Brotherhood of the Wolf: Director’s Cut (Universal).

In TV on DVD, there’s Entourage Season 4 (HBO), Everybody Hates Chris Season 3 (Warner), Heroes Season 2 (Universal, also Blu-Ray), NCIS Season 5 (Paramount), and The Shield Season 6 (Sony).

Finally, this week’s action-packed lineup of Blu-Ray only releases includes: Errol Flynn (again) in The Adventures of Robin Hood (Warner); Gov. Schwarzenegger fighting Satan in End of Days (Universal); the first season of NBC’s Heroes (Universal); Crockett and Tubbs hitting the big screen in Michael Mann’s Miami Vice (Universal), and the submarine thriller U-571 (Universal).

America the Beautiful: 15 Movies That Show What's Right With U.S. (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:00:00 GMT

YOUNG MR. LINCOLN (1939)

One of the most famous lines from any John Ford movie is, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Not great advice for a reporter, but Ford got away with in this picture, which isn't a straight biopic but a romantic fantasy about the pre-fame Abraham Lincoln (Henry Fonda) as we'd like to imagine it. The movie's script does have a basis in history: the story is built around a murder trial that young Abe took on as a fledgling lawyer. The movie uses this set-up to provide Fonda with the chance to show Lincoln demonstrating his folksy sagacity, his humor, his basic decency and the canniness that would make him a successful politician, but in embryonic form, as a young leading man learning the ropes on his way to becoming a legend. He may not know, as we know, that he's the great Abraham Lincoln. But as we see him figuring out that he has that in him, the movie elevates patriotic corn to the level of folk poetry.

MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON (1984)

Yes, Virginia, Robin Williams used to be good for something. In this melancholy comedy from director Paul Mazursky, Williams slips easily and deeply into the role of a Russian musician who surprises himself by defecting during a trip to New York. It's easy to differentiate this movie from the run of hard-sell, Commie-bashing Cold War movies that Hollywood churned out in the Reagan '80s, and not just because Williams never picks up a machine gun or steps into a boxing ring to beat some patriotic respect into a Russkie villain who's built like a moose. The movie respects the pain of self-exile and the dislocation that comes from the struggle to adjust to a new culture, whether its hero is cursing America after he's been mugged or passing out in a grocery store after suffering a cerebral overload from trying to choose among too many varieties of coffee. Because it sees the craziness in a chauvinistic country composed of immigrants from all over, its tribute to the reasons for taking pleasure and pride in America go down easy, without dishonesty or embarrassment.

JAZZ ON A SUMMER'S DAY (1960)

Bert Stern's record of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival (featuring performances by Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Jack Teagarden, Anita O'Day, Dinah Washington, Chuck Berry, Gerry Mulligan, and others who did more for our nation's good name than anybody whose name you've ever seen on a ballet) preserves, without embalming, the sensation of spending a day blissed out in the sunshine sampling the wide range of everybody's favorite indigenous American art form. With cute kids, chilled babes, pretty boats, and no sunburn.

DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY (2005)

Top 5 reasons why I love America: (1) freedom of speech, (2) freedom of assembly, (3) our rich, diverse culture, itself a mix-and-match patchwork of multiple overlapping cultures, (4) the ability of all those overlapping cultures to co-exist and mingle while maintaining their own distinct perspectives and points of view and (5) our greatest export, entertainment. All of these elements are in full effect in Dave’s Chappelle’s Block Party, a rollicking concert documentary that manages (like Woodstock and Stop Making Sense before it) to capture a very specific moment in our national timeline. It’s not just a movie, it’s an event...and I don't mean simply the titular block party, an all-day, all-inclusive jam for the residents of one hardscrabble Brooklyn neighborhood (and one lucky Midwestern marching band) featuring undervalued performers like Erykah Badu, the Roots and Jill Scott and socially conscious rappers like Kanye West and Talib Kwelli. Among other things, the film was a fantastically classy, big-hearted, easy-going comeback for Dave Chappelle after his 2005 "meltdown" (actually a shockingly rare example of celebrity integrity). But, more importantly, in this post-9/11, post-Katrina, post-optimistic, pre-apocalyptic era, director Michel Gondry captures a joyfully defiant moment of celebration, hope and community sorely needed but sorely missing from our recent media landscape.

NASHVILLE (1976)

Everyone wants to write the Great American Novel, but very few people even come close. The same thing goes for films, but if any one qualifies for the title of Great American Movie, it's Robert Altman's masterpiece about the events of a single weekend in the country music capitol. Altman was not then and would never be a jingo: Nashville shows us the very worst that people are capable of throughout its running time and right up until its dramatic conclusion. But while it's a movie about America's flaws and deceptions, it's also a movie about America's grace and possibilities, about how little moments of decency and humanity can shine through even at the worst of times. With its sprawling cast and complex characters, we are shown cynicism, deceit, selfishness, callowness, stupidity and cruelty, but we're also shown beauty, honesty, kindness, determination, charity and insight – often from the same people at different times. Like the best and most ambitious art, Nashville attempts to put the world and everything in it within a limited setting and a restricted narrative, and it succeeds not cleanly, but messily, which is the only way it could have succeeded. Made at a crucial time in American history, where the pride many felt at the upcoming national bicentennial conflicted with recent events, including war, economic uncertainty, and political scandal. It couldn't have been more timely, and in its two hours and forty minutes, it does what a great American work of art must do: illustrate what is dreadful about our nation, in order to throw what is glorious about it into sharp relief.

Click here for Part One & Part Two

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce

America the Critical: 15 Movies That Show What's Wrong With U.S. (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:45:00 GMT

SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG (1971) & BAADASSSSS! (2003)

In 1971, director Melvin Van Peebles, sick of Hollywood’s portrayal of African Americans, risked everything to present his own version of the black experience where, according to his own manifesto for the project, “niggers could walk out standing tall instead of avoiding each other's eyes.” For White America, the most shocking aspect of Van Peebles’ film was the fact that its hero, falsely-accused murder suspect Sweetback (played by the director himself) not only escapes “The Man,” but also takes out a few white cops along the way and, in the final credits, offers the warning: “Watch out - a baad assss nigger is coming to collect some dues." Unlike the “can’t we all just get along” sentiment of the Civil Rights Movement, Van Peebles’ film dared to publicly acknowledge the black community’s righteous indignation after 300 years of mistreatment at the hands of Caucasians (a still-shocking sentiment, as evidenced by the media’s recent saturation bombing of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America!” soundbite), influencing everything from the blaxploitation genre that followed directly on the heels of Sweetback’s box office success to the politicized rap of N.W.A. and Public Enemy and Mookie’s controversial decision to hurl a garbage can through the window of Sal’s Pizzeria in Spike Lee’s iconic Do The Right Thing (1989). But (as the director’s son and Sweetback co-star, Mario, dramatized in his own 2003 biopic, BAADASSSSS!), Van Peebles was more a social crusader than a wild-eyed militant, providing opportunity and experience to minorities both in front of and behind the camera...plus, he gave Earth, Wind & Fire their first big break, which all by itself helped to make America (and the world) a slightly better place to be.

HARLAN COUNTY U.S.A. (1976)

Barbara Kopple's groundbreaking documentary on a bitterly contested coal miner's strike in Kentucky is widely cited as one of the finest examples of the form. Made in a year when miners' wages were at a then-record low, and mining company profits were at a then-record high, Harlan County U.S.A. not only captures the horrible conditions, dangerous nature (guns are everywhere in the film, a murder takes place, and Kopple is to this day convinced that she was meant to be killed by company blacklegs) and contentious rivalries of the mine work, but also shows the little triumphs, the conviviality, and the never-give-in determination for the people for whom this life is not an entertainment, but a reality. What is most appalling – and most damning of the "dirty capitalist system" bemoaned by coal minders in their century-old union songs – is the fact that now, over 30 years after the movie was completed, things have gotten even worse. The power of the unions, which could barely protect the workers of Harlan County then, would be almost completely shattered in the subsequent decades. The workers of today, now often illegal immigrants or unskilled workers paid barely more than minimum wage, still do some of the most dangerous industrial work imaginable, and there is no one left to protect them. So, watching Harlan County U.S.A. today, one still has to catch one's throat at the terrible injustice being done to the workers of 1976 – and try and comprehend the awful truth that since then, the situation has only continued to decline, and even the simple pride in the face of impossible struggle evidenced by the workers and their wives seems like a relic of an idealized past.

HESTER STREET (1975)

Like a number of entries on this list, Joan Micklin Silver's low-budget, independent hit was made in the 1970s, a time when a great many movies were examining time-honored American values and finding them wanting. Hester Street is a coming-to-America story about Jewish immigrants making new lives for themselves in the Lower East Side of New York in 1896, and what immediately sets it apart from earlier movies of this kind, such as Elia Kazan's America, America, is that it dares to suggest that what some of the newcomers have lost in their passage from the Old World is dearer than what they've gained. The central characters are Yekl, who quickly adopts the name Jake (Stephen Keats) and his wife, Gitl (Carol Kane), and what makes Gitl the heroine is that she, unlike Jake -- who practically welds his derby to his head and takes to making such pronouncement as, "I don't care for nobody, I'm an American fella!" -- recoils from the noise and bustle of the New World and cannot assimilate. Kane's eccentric, almost unearthly qualities, which would eventually make her a tremendous comedienne, are used very tenderly here; the fact that she can't quite fit in with her surroundings is proof of her value, she is rewarded with the attentions of a disgruntled fellow immigrant, Bernstein (Mel Howard), who gives voice to the filmmakers' objections to the crass vulgarity of American materialism, which Jake and his haughty new girlfriend Mamie (Dorrie Kavanaugh) embody. Gitl and Bernstein find happiness together while remaining too good for the place they've come to.

SERPICO (1973)

At a time when movies like Dirty Harry (and its sequel Magnum Force) were inviting audiences to cheer brutalist cops on the theory that "the system" was too sensitive to the rights of the accused to allow a good, rule-obeying cop to get anything done, this fact-based story (from back in the days when the phrase "inspired by a true story" meant that what you were seeing in the movie bore some actual relation to something that had actually happened in real life) invited the audience to save some of its sympathy for a good cop -- Frank Serpico, a NYPD officer played by Al Pacino -- who just wanted to do his job and stay honest while he did it but was hassled, probably set up to be killed, and ultimately run off the force by all the grafting bullies in the department who were so enthusiastically committed to their lives of corruption that they couldn't see him as anything but a freak, and, worse, a potential snitch. Serpico eventually served as a witness at the Knapp Commission investigating police corruption, though he did so reluctantly; he would have preferred to remain a cop, but it must be a bitch chasing rapists and murderers down dark alleys when you're never sure when the other cops running with you are going to take the opportunity to put a cap in your ass. Although the director, Sidney Lumet, sets a downbeat tone for the ending, Serpico was actually set at what could have been seen as a hopeful moment, with the Watergate hearings mirroring the Knapp Commission and when society seemed to be trying to run the rascals out of the halls of power. Eight years later, when Lumet made Prince of the City, another fact-based story about a corrupt NYPD detective who tries to cleanse his conscious by gathering information on crooked lawyers and judges, the idea that you have to be at least a little bit crooked to function in American society had become so well-accepted that Lumet reported that, well into filming, he and his screenwriter were still arguing about whether their tattletale protagonist deserved to be regarded as some kind of hero or just a dirty rat.

THE SEARCHERS (1956)

This movie, set in Texas in the 1860s and 1970s and starring John Wayne as the unrepentant Confederate veteran Ethan Edwards, is widely regarded as the greatest of all John Ford's Westerns by people who might regard that designation as synonymous with saying that it's the best movie ever made. It's a tribute to the heroic qualities that Wayne embodied, demanding as they do the viewer's respect without flinching from the qualities that went with them -- machismo, racism, and a capacity for sadism, all of them carried to the point, in the phrase used by more than one observer, of borderline psychosis. The Confederate Ethan's attitude towards the enslavement of black people is never made clear, but his searching for the niece who's been kidnapped by Comanches -- a chase fueled by his need to kill her, because by the time he's found her she'll have bedded down with and "become" Comanche herself, which he regards as a fate worse than death -- clearly provides him with the opportunity for a new, one-man race war, a war against the Indians that doesn't end when his enemies lie dead: he shoots out the eyes of a fallen nemesis, because according to the Indian's religion that will prevent him from entering Heaven. Ford, whose relation with Wayne was known to have had its prickly moments, taps into that side of his star who would later tell a Playboy interviewer that the Native Americans deserved to be wiped out for having been so "selfish" as to want to keep their land, and the result is something very strange to see: an apotheosis of a man at his most morally petty. In the end, Ethan returns the girl to civilization and, with all the surviving major characters gathered inside her family's house, is last seen walking away from its entrance. He's an iconic hero without who the American West could never have been tamed...and civilization can't wait until it knows it's seen the last of him.

Click here to read Part One and Part Two

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

Watch the Lost John Ford Movie

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:00:00 GMT

In Searching for John Ford: A Life, biographer Joseph McBride described the director’s final film as “the most dismaying entry in the Ford filmography, a film that paints such a simplistic and often historically inaccurate view of America’s most controversial war that even the USIA [United States Information Agency] found it embarrassing.” Now you can see it for yourself.

Ford did not actually direct Vietnam! Vietnam!, but he served as executive producer on the 1971 production commissioned by the US government’s propaganda arm. McBride writes: “Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this little known episode of Ford’s life is that privately he had a highly skeptical view of the Vietnam War. After making two trips to Vietnam in the winter of 1968 and the spring of 1969, Ford wrote to his high school classmate Alnah Johnston, ‘What’s the war all about? Damned if I know. I haven’t the slightest idea what we’re doing there.’”

Eric Spiegelman was curious enough to seek out the barely released film. “Ford’s last documentary remained locked away in a vault for the next 27 years, when a change in the law allowed the National Archives to make it available to the public. I learned about the existence of Vietnam! Vietnam! three years ago. Curiosity led me to pull the ancient reels from the National Archives and have them digitized. Years of neglect badly damaged the audio portion of the first half of the film, and my cousin painstakingly restored the soundtrack to the best of his ability.”

You can watch the complete film at Spiegelman’s site Bus Your Own Tray. I’ve only managed to get five minutes into it, as Charlton Heston’s seemingly random narration (“The Beatles! Pope John! Dope! Black power!”) keeps lulling me to sleep, but die-hard Ford completists may fare better.

The Rep Report (January 11-15)

Phil Nugent — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:00:00 GMT

BERKELEY: Pacific Film Archives launches a wide-ranging new retrospective, "The Medieval Remake" (January 11 - February 16), devoted to the many different flavors of medieval fantasy on film. (The series "was inspired by The Contagious Middle Ages in Post-Communist East Central Europe, an exhibition on view at the Townsend Center for the Humanities on the UC Berkeley campus through January.") We're not talking Robert Taylor and George Sanders jousting in tin costumes here; the whole program is strictly high end, with Takovsky's Andrei Rublev, Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, both Dreyer's and Bresson's takes on the story of Joan of Arc in the dock, a pair of Ingmar Bergman's flashbacks to the Dark Ages (The Seventh Seal and Virgin Spring), and Fritz Lang's two enormous, silent Nibelungen, baroque visual extravangas so large-scaled that Wagner himself might have wondered if maybe the director were laying it on a little thick. It's striking to be reminded of how many great directors of wildly varying ranges and styles have been drawn to this period and these stories, and it promises to be an amazing series. But you might want to stick Ivanhoe or Excalibur in your Netflix queue just to help you lighten up afterwards.

Hepcats, zoot suiters, and beboppers can usher in the new year at PFA with "Cool World: Jazz and the Movies" (January 12 - February 6), a series that mixes well-known films with jazzy scores and settings (such as The Man with the Golden Arm, featuring Frank Sinatra's great performance as a junkie poker dealer) and relative obscurities. Notable among the latter category are Sweet Love, Bitter, a low-budget 1967 drama that features a strong performance by the comedian-activist Dick Gregory as a character modeled on Charlie Parker, and All Night Long, a 1962, modern version of Othello set in London, that features Charles Mingus in an acting role as himself. (A clip from it appears in the documentary Mingus.)

NEW YORK: "John Ford at Fox" (January 12-February 2) spotlights the glory period that was the director's time at "the Hollywood studio closest to being Ford’s base." (It's the same body of work honored in the new DVD box set Ford at Fox.) There are films here, such as The Iron Horse, Young Mr. Lincoln, and My Darling Clementine, where the director defined the popular version of key chapters of American history; others, such as the folk comedies Steamboat 'Round the Bend and Judge Priest, which preserve the performance style of Will Rogers, now are American history. The series begins with the new documentary Becoming John Ford, featuring interviews with Ford biographer Joseph McBride and Peter Fonda.